Whether you are new to digital marketing or sales, you must have heard about the popular term ‘sales funnel’. Most people think it’s a high confusion or complex term to understand and execute for business, but it’s not.
When we talk about the Internet, at any point, your potential customers are at a certain level or distance from becoming your customer. In simple terms, in the road of buying, your potential customers are at anywhere between the starting and ending point.
A digital marketing strategy works closely with the sales funnel. It ensures at any given point of the level, you are nurturing the needs and desires of the potential customers. So, it becomes extremely important to understand and build a solid sales funnel to close as many as possible deals. In this article, we will understand in detail what a sales funnel in digital marketing is. We’ll discuss what are its components.
Funnel’s top part
When it comes to the top part of the funnel, it’s generally the resources that customers are interacting with. For example, it could be a blog, a video, or a how-to-do pdf guide. All these things fall in the top part of the funnel. In this stage, the customers have certain needs. But, they are clueless about their possible solutions. That is the reason, the potential buyers are jumping from one blog to another to read more about their problems. For catering to customers at this stage, here are some best things:
Creating long-form content:
The best thing to attract your potential customers is by creating long-form content from. This can be understood more about all the possible solutions. Basically, you are indirectly pitching them your services. There are high chances that your long-form content will provide them more clarity.
Paid ads
The second most impactful way to make the top level of the funnel most robust is to run paid ads for your services or products. At this level, you should avoid any kind of complexities in the paid media. Instead of talking too technical, it’s better to use simple words to attract those customers.
Middle of the funnel
Once your customers have an idea about what their potential solution looks like, they enter the second part of the funnel. At this stage, they are fully aware of the kind of solution they are looking for as they have figured out their needs. This is the stage where the potential customers make a shift from requirement analysis to solution searching.
In the middle of the sales funnel, they are searching for various types of solutions. For example, from the search for the best formal shoes for a gala dinner, now the customer is searching for the best types of Oxford shoes. For catering to the needs of customers at this stage, you can do the following things:
Targeting long-tail keywords & landing pages
Targeting long-form search queries and preparing dedicated landing pages will help in converting that user into a highly-interested individual who is about to make the purchase. Along with the long-form content, you can create separate pages that are specifically targeting the direct need of the customer.
Performance-based ads
In these types of ads, you are precisely targeting users’ behavior and showing ads that have high chances of getting clicked. These ads have a good conversion rate because the potential customers are more aware of what they are clicking.
Funnel’s bottom end
Now, finally, the customer is at the bottom of the sales funnel stage where they are only a step away from buying a product or a service. In this state, people are mostly sure about what service or product they want for themselves. At this stage, they know their exact problem and solution for the same. At this stage, people are generally searching for a service provider or a company from where they can buy a product. This is a quite crucial stage where most of the conversations happen or people switch to competitors.
At this stage, you need to be really precise, and accurately present content or promotions in front of the potential buyers. To nurture potential customers at this stage, here are a few best practices that you can perform:
SEO & PPC
SEO services & PPC are the best-fit practices that you can perform to attract potential buyers in either organic or paid manner. At the bottom of the funnel, both practices tend to perform well because the customer is on the verge of buying.
Work on conversion rate optimization
It’s time to refine your conversion process and improve the CRO of your marketing channel. It could include new landing pages, new style ads, more guest posting, and so on.
These were the basics of a sales funnel in digital marketing that everyone should know if they are in this digital domain. Start optimizing your digital marketing strategies and thrive online.
